HONG KONG’S BEAUTY BOOM/4 THE MAG COVER FORMULA/12Women’s Wear Daily • The Retailers’ Daily Newspaper • January 4, 2008 • $2.00

PHOT

O BY

GEO

RGE

CHIN

SEE

Down the AisleVera Wang is tossing Bouquet, her newest fragrance, into this

spring’s fragrance fray. The scent, coming in April, will be available

in about 500 specialty stores in the U.S. And that’s not all that

Wang has in the way of fl orals this spring: Flower Princess, a

follow-up to her successful Princess launch, is also set to be

released in April. For more on both fragrances, see page 6.

WWDFRIDAYBeauty

See Banana, Page 10

Keen on Simon Kneen:Banana Republic TapsNew Creative DirectorBy Sharon Edelson

Banana Republic is getting serious about trading up.

On Thursday, the fashion retailer appointed Simon Kneen, formerly of Brooks Brothers parent Retail Brand Alliance, as executive vice president of design and creative director. Jack Calhoun, Banana Republic’s president, said Kneen’s experience with high-end women’s and men’s wear will allow him to take the retailer to another level, including its new high-end collection, Monogram.

And Calhoun is so bullish about Monogram he even is considering opening freestanding stores devoted to

WWD.COM2 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

WWDFRIDAYBeauty

GENERALSimon Kneen, creative design director at Retail Brand Alliance, is joining Banana Republic as vice president of design and creative director.

Christophe Albarran was named president of Dolce & Gabbana’s U.S. subsidiary, succeeding Glenn McMahon, now ceo of St. John.

Beauty is showing its true colors in Hong Kong, with industry executives saying they rang up revenues in the strong double digits for 2007.

Vera Wang is launching two scents for spring: Bouquet, which joins her Signature collection, and Flower Princess, adding to the Princess line.

Ricky’s, the New York store with a crass sense of humor and irreverent style, aims to reinforce its primary role as a purveyor of beauty supplies.

Luxury is booming and spreading to an affl uent middle class in Istanbul, making franchising a big business in Turkey’s largest and richest city.

12467

11

● THEFT AT MCQUEEN: Alexander McQueen has become the latest victim of fashion thieves raiding London shops and stu-dios. On Dec. 27, thieves broke into McQueen’s East End head-quarters, stealing computers and some handbag samples from the fall 2008 season. A spokeswoman said the theft was not a major one, and the computers contained mostly administrative, rather than creative, data. She said the company was looking at closed circuit TV footage and working with the police. In September, thieves broke into Christopher Kane’s studio, and stole a large part of his spring 2008 collection as well as the de-signer’s laptop. Since the beginning of last year, London stores including Marc Jacobs, Asprey, Roger Vivier, Luella, Brora, Anya Hindmarch, Sonia Rykiel and Frost French have been ran-sacked by thieves on mopeds. It’s unclear, however, whether the store thieves and the studio thieves are working together.

● MAUS BUILDS GANT STAKE: Maus Frères SA continues to consolidate its stake in Gant after last month launching a 5.2 bil-lion kronor, or $809.3 million at current exchange, hostile bid for the Swedish sportswear firm, which was promptly rejected by a majority of Gant shareholders. Maus said Thursday it had increased its share in Gant to 23.7 percent by buying shares from an institutional investor. Maus, the Swiss retailer that owns the Lacoste brand, previously held an 18.1 percent stake in Gant. Maus’ offer for Gant, which operates more than 300 stores, is good through Jan. 11. Initially Maus snapped up 12.5 percent of Gant on the Stockholm Stock Exchange on Dec. 11 before making a cash bid of 310 kronor, or $48.25, a share for the rest of the firm.

In Brief

Classifi ed Advertisements.............................................................15

WWD IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2008 FAIRCHILD FASHION GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

VOLUME 195, NO. 3. WWD (ISSN 0149–5380) is published daily (except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with one additional issue in January and December, two additional issues in March, May, June, August, October and, November,

and three additional issues in February, April, and September) by Fairchild Fashion Group, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Shared Services provided by

Condé Nast Publications: S. I. Newhouse, Jr., Chairman; Charles H. Townsend, President/CEO; John W. Bellando, Executive Vice President/COO; Debi Chirichella Sabino, Senior Vice President/CFO; Jill Bright, Executive Vice President/Human

Resources. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offi ces. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 886549096-RT0001. Canada Post: return

undeliverable Canadian addresses to: P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill, ON L4B 4R6 POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA 91615–5008. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to WWD, P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA 91615-5008, call 800-289-0273, or visit

www.subnow.com/wd. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address all editorial, business, and production

correspondence to WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. For permissions and reprint requests, please call 212-630-4274 or fax requests to 212-630-4280. Visit us online at www.wwd.com. To subscribe to other Fairchild magazines on the World Wide Web, visit www.fairchildpub.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list

available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA

91615-5008 or call 800-289-0273. WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING,

BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR

CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY

A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE.

To e-mail reporters and editors at WWD, the address is fi rstname.lastname@fairchildpub.com, using the individual’s name.

“It’s as fast as China. I’m very bullish on it — much more bullish than India.’’

— Michael Burke, chief executive offi cer of Fendi,

on luxury growth in the Middle East.

Quote of the Week

L’Oréal Stake in Armani Seen as UnlikelyMILAN — Industry sources generally dismissed reports of a possible L’Oréal investment in Giorgio Armani, which resurfaced Wednesday in the Italian newspaper Milano Finanza.

While the newspaper story was vague, its sources claimed L’Oréal is set to acquire a stake in Armani before the end of this year. L’Oréal holds the licenses for producing and distributing fra-grances, cosmetics and skin care for the Giorgio Armani and Emporio Armani brands.

A spokeswoman for the French beauty giant and a spokesman for Giorgio Armani declined comment on the speculation.

However, industry sources don’t give it much credence. One said he doesn’t believe L’Oréal would enter into another fashion-related venture following its failed seven-year run with Lanvin, which it owned until 2001. Historically, beauty companies have found fashion businesses dif-fi cult to master and disposed of them. In recent

years, Groupe Clarins stopped manufacturing the Thierry Mugler fashion brand and Procter & Gamble shuttered the Rochas fashion business.

In numerous interviews in the past, Armani has mentioned L’Oréal as a possible partner in his fashion house if he ever decided to sell. But he also has pointed to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton as the kind of investor he would like.

In November, at the opening of his new fl agship in Ginza in Tokyo, Armani discussed in general terms what type of investor for which he might be looking. “The only investor that would make sense to me is one who loves fashion and for his own gratifi cation wants to participate in the history of a glorious brand,” he told WWD.

But he also insisted he has no plans to retire. Asked if he was staying put, he joked: “I would rather say I’m staying on but not staying still.”

— Jennifer Weil, Paris, and Stephanie Epiro, Milan

Dolce & Gabbana Taps New U.S. PresidentBy Andrew Roberts

Dolce & Gabbana on Thursday named Christophe Albarran

as president of its U.S. subsidiary, replacing Glenn McMahon, who left in August to become chief ex-ecutive officer of St. John.

Albarran was most recently vice president of global sales at Victorinox Swiss Army Inc., where he worked since May 2006. Earlier, he was worldwide director of customer service at Prada SpA.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were traveling back from holiday in the Maldives at press time and were unavailable for comment.

The design duo will look to Albarran to drive growth in the U.S. which, for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007, accounted for 13 percent of wholesale rev-enues — a modest share by com-parison with Italy and the rest of Europe, which made up 69 percent of Dolce & Gabbana’s burgeoning business in the same period.

Albarran will also oversee the expansion of the Italian fashion group’s retail network

in North America. Dolce & Gabbana currently operates 14 directly owned stores, including the recently refurbished New York fl agship at 825-827 Madison Avenue, which the designers in-augurated last month. Units in San Francisco and Chicago are planned for this year.

Albarran is the third execu-tive in seven years to hold the post of U.S. president, which reports directly to Dolce & Gabbana’s board.

Managing director Cristiana

Ruella, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, told WWD’s brother publication DNR in the fall that the role of U.S. president has evolved, fol-lowing the decision to bring the younger D&G line in-house as of the spring 2007 season. The posi-tion requires “operational, fi nan-cial and logistical“ clout, rather than “simply commercial exper-tise,” Ruella said at the time.

In the fiscal year ended March 31, net profi ts at Dolce & Gabbana soared 38 percent to 149.7 million euros, or $191.6 mil-lion, on consolidated revenues of 1.05 billion euros, or $1.34 billion. Dollar fi gures have been convert-ed at average exchange rates for the period to which they refer.

Total wholesale revenues, meaning sales of Dolce & Gabbana and D&G branded prod-ucts, by both the group and third-party licensees, reached 1.35 bil-lion euros, or $1.73 billion.

The D&G brand, which has experienced an average annual growth rate of 24 percent over the last decade, represented 44 percent of total wholesale rev-enues, or 600.8 million euros ($769 million).

The group generates much of its sales through clothing. Apparel, including beachwear and underwear, accounted for 44 percent of total wholesale sales. Fragrances, eyewear, timepieces and jewelry make up 42 percent and leather accessories and foot-wear the remaining 14 percent.

However, a recent co-brand-ing deal with Motorola demon-strates the growing demand for the fashion brand. Factoring in sales of the gold Dolce & Gabbana Motorazr V3i cell phone — launched in June 2006 — the Italian fashion group’s wholesale revenues rose to 1.55 billion euros, or just under $2 billion, for fi scal 2007.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Manhattan fl agship.

Prevage Night WWD

THE MORNING AFTER NEVER LOOKED SO GOOD.

*Acc

ordi

ng to

the

Nat

iona

l Sle

ep F

ound

atio

n 20

07 S

leep

in A

mer

ica

Pol

l on

1,00

3 w

omen

18-

65.

©20

08 E

lizab

eth

Ard

en, I

nc. E

lizab

eth

Ard

en is

a re

gist

ered

trad

emar

k of

FD

Man

agem

ent,

Inc.

PR

EVA

GE

®is

a re

gist

ered

trad

emar

k of

Alle

rgan

, Inc

.

Customized one-touch dispensing.

Over 60% of women experience problematic sleep.* Without a fullsleep cycle skin’s ability to fight premature aging is compromised. Restassured, PREVAGE® can compensate. With encapsulated Idebenone,Mega Complex-A and a blend of high performance moisturizers, itinfuses skin throughout the night to boost its anti-aging abilities andhelp enhance skin’s own natural repair process.

We can’t give you a better night’s sleep, but we can help you wake upwith skin that looks repaired, refreshed and recovered.

prevageskin.com

INTRODUCING

anti-aging night cream

By Jennifer Weil

HONG KONG — Beauty is showing its true colors here.Walking down a street in Hong Kong just a decade ago, it was rare to spot women

wearing foundation or nail polish. Now though, it’s hard to fi nd a bevy of better-groomed denizens anywhere.

“There have been lots of changes over the past 10 years,” said Esther Kwong, director and general manager of Shiseido in Hong Kong.

For one, the city’s economy rebounded strongly after a series of alarming events. From 1998 to 2003, its business in all sectors was negatively impacted by Asia’s eco-nomic crisis. And in 2003, the SARS epidemic virtually cut Hong Kong off from the outside world.

But ever since, sales of beauty products have risen consistently, with many indus-try executives saying they rang up revenue in the strong double digits last year.

The growth is driven by numerous phenomena.“Now, consumers are more sophisticated and know more about skin care and

makeup,” said Kwong. That includes the increasingly wealthy from Mainland China. In part, this sophistication stems from the fact that consumers see ever more

beauty advertising. According to the Nielsen tracking fi rm, media spend on cosmet-ics-related ads in Hong Kong magazines for the fi rst 11 months of last year topped that for full-year 2006 by 25 percent. Further, the emergence of malls (of which Hong Kong has about a dozen) gives shoppers more places to buy beauty items outside the traditional department and convenience store channels.

And given Hong Kong’s free-port status (the city is a largely autonomous Special Administrative Region of China), it has been relatively easy for products from countries spanning the globe to jockey for position on counters here. Skin care generates the lion’s share of Hong Kong’s beauty business, fol-lowed by color cosmetics, then fragrance, ex-ecutives said.

For an additional point of difference and to bolster business even more, beauty retail-ers are ramping up their new brand offerings — often to include products with a “healthy” bent or with those billed as exclusives to Hong Kong. Stores also are upping their customer service to a greater degree.

Lane Crawford is a case in point. The de-partment store takes a somewhat different ap-proach to how it sells beauty in each of its four Hong Kong locations, which are a 10-minute walk from one another.

When it comes to niche skin care, in its Pacifi c Place store, for instance, there is a

Healthy Living beauty concept of some 900 square feet that was created in May around three core brands — Elemis, Dr. Hauschka and Care by Stella McCartney.

“Every brand chosen in this area has to be defi ned ‘it’s good for me because…,’” explained Simone Pedersen, Lane Crawford’s general merchandise manager of cosmetics. “It’s not just about organic and natural brands.”

Also found in this area are natural and organic products, beauty tonics, beauty juices, oxygen in a can, sunscreen and hair care. Brands include Cor, Lisa Simon, Ole Henrikson, Trilogy, Juice Beauty and Dr. Perricone.

In Lane Crawford’s International Finance Centre location, in lieu of a Healthy Living area is a space dedicated to brands “that are innova-tive and/or have great technology behind them,” said Pedersen, who has lined shelves with the likes of Amatokin, Strivectin, AR 457, MD Skincare, Dr. Steven Victor and Dr. Sebagh.

“We put strong signage here,” said Pedersen. “It’s like self-education areas. And we sample heavily.

“Four-and-a-half years ago, our cosmetics department had 40 brands. It now has 200,” said Pedersen, who explained that the strategy behind the concept was to build the department on the “core brands” (think Estée Lauder, Shiseido and SK-II, for instance).

To help a person fi nd the products best suited to her or him, Lane Crawford in late 2004 instigated a free Cosmetic Concierge service involving a beauty adviser giving advice, explained Pedersen.

“We’re going to do it in all of the stores going forward. It’s really a great service,” she said.

Another way Lane Crawford looks to service clients is through exclusive offers. So, too, do other retailers, such as Joyce Beauty, whose fi ve locations carry about 40 beauty brands, of which some 60 percent are exclusive to Hong Kong.

Joyce Beauty is, for instance, the only Hong Kong retailer to sell Korean makeup artist brand Vidi Vici. Alice Wong, Joyce Beauty’s division manager, showed the Vidi Vici products, including a lunch-box-like case of color cosmetics, while standing in Joyce Beauty’s fl agship on Queen’s Road, Central. In April, it was expanded by 30 percent and refi tted alongside the rest of the Joyce store with mirrored fi xtures to have an ultraluxurious look, explained Wong.

Other beauty products selling here include Annick Goutal, L’Artisan Parfumeur and Chantecaille.

“We’re kind of a platform for small brands,” said Wong, who added that, over the past decade, Joyce Beauty has brought names such as Laura Mercier and Bobbi Brown to Hong Kong.

Harvey Nichols’ Beyond Beauty department carries numerous exclusives in the city, as well, including June Jacobs, 3Lab, Ren, Demeter Fragrance, Ayurmedic, Le Vin and Olavi, according to Anita Yuen, director of the department store’s beauty division, who explained the retailer has about 30 niche brands in all.

Beauty seller Sasa, for its part, manages in Hong Kong more than 100 interna-tional labels, such as Elizabeth Arden, La Colline and Nuxe, said Guy Look, chief fi nancial offi cer and executive director of the retailer, which operates more than 56 doors here and in Macau, plus fi ve doors in Mainland China and 47 elsewhere in Asia. Such exclusives generate some 35 percent of Sasa’s business, which hit 2.89 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $371.5 million at average exchange, for the fi scal year ended March 31, 2007.

“We try to work very closely with different brands,” he said, explaining that it is not Sasa’s strategy to be purely a discounter. “While working with them, we leverage

4

“Consumers are more sophisticated and know more about skin care and makeup. ”

— Esther Kwong, Shiseido

WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

The Beauty Report

Hong Kong Market Comes of Age

Sasa has 100-plus

stores in Asia.

Lane Crawford’s Healthy Living space.

A look at retailer Joyce Beauty.

5WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

WWD.COM

HONG KONG — This city has become a veritable magnet for niche brands — many of whose prod-ucts have a “green” positioning — thanks in no small part to the Cosmoprof trade show, which focuses on natural health.

During a recent session, companies from as far afi eld as South Korea, South Africa and Israel were showing novelties, many in the hopes of broadening their distribution to Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Genic Co. Ltd. of South Korea showcased its natural Puretree products. The company, which also creates private label beauty prod-ucts for numerous retailers and manufactur-ers, is gearing up to introduce a water-free shampoo and body wash, whose core consum-ers are expected to be children and older peo-ple, according to Job Kim, Genic’s overseas sales department manager.

Another South Korean fi rm, Coswel, pre-sented — among other items — a self-heating, single-dose mask using volcanic ingredients.

From Australia comes the newly minted Carbon Neutral brand whose tag line reads: “Change the world from your bathroom.” The environmentally conscious line, which in-cludes face, body and hair care, is billed to be eco-friendly in all ways, from its formulas to its recyclable packaging, according to director Justin Heaven.

Also hailing from Oz is Botany Essentials Pty Ltd., offering some 300 natural plant aro-mas, and Jojoba Australia Pty Ltd., which sources ingredients from organically grown jojoba for its Jojocare product.

Kuhs GmbH from Germany introduced a 23-item natural line, called Kuhs Kosmetik Cosmetic Concepts, whose formulas are cre-ated with liposomes and nanoparticles.

South African brand McNab’s Wellth showed what it believes is “the fi rst organic deodorant that works,” according to its chief executive offi cer Rupert McKerron. “I think health is the latest thing people are starting to spend money on.”

— J.W.

their marketing and they, in turn, get business.”Look added that, with its wide product range (Sasa carries about 400 brands and more

than 15,000 stockkeeping units), the retailer aims to be a one-stop cosmetics destination for everyone. Sasa’s focus on customer service extends from the selling fl oor into its treat-ment rooms found in almost all of the retailer’s locations. Sasa also owns the Philip Wain Fitness and Beauty Club, which has nine locations in the Asia-Pacifi c region.

In September, Sasa inaugurated a 133-square-foot Spa & Wellbeing section with six natural brands in its Causeway Bay store. A further fi ve, including more brands, are planned in the city.

“It goes with Chinese tradition,” said Look, referring to the belief that beauty comes from the inside out.

Such an emphasis on natural beauty goes hand-in-hand with The Body Shop’s philoso-phy. The L’Oréal-owned natural retailer and manufacturer has more than 25 locations around Hong Kong.

In all, L’Oréal runs more than 60 stores in the city. Two months ago, with the unveiling of the Elements mall, L’Oréal — which has been in Hong Kong for 25 years and China for 10 — inaugurated six branded stores, including the fi rst Helena Rubinstein door worldwide.

While it is not L’Oréal’s intent to be a retailer (Stephen Mosely, president and man-aging director of L’Oréal Hong Kong, said the company would “much rather work with retail partners if we can”), such stores in a market like Hong Kong allow the company to express a brand fully.

“We’re following the development of the environment,” Mosely said.It’s an exciting one in Hong Kong, where the consumer’s appetite for beauty keeps

growing.“We see emerging segments that probably didn’t exist a few years ago,” said Mosely,

ticking off the men’s and sun care markets, plus the dermo-cosmetics segment, among others. “We think the trends will continue driving the market.”

Cosmoprof Asia Attracts Niche Brands

Beauty areas at Lane Crawford’s

Pacifi c Place store (here and

below).

Inside a Sasa location.

Water-free shampoo

from Genic.

Items from Carbon Neutral, a new Australian line.

A brochure from the Carbon Neutral brand.

It’s time for another trip to the altar for Vera Wang. The designer is launching two new fragrances

this spring: Bouquet, which joins her bridal-themed Signature scent collection, and Flower Princess, which will join the top-selling Princess franchise. Both are slated for April launches in the U.S.

“Our idea was to move the Vera Wang brand into a new expression of bridal,” said Laura Lee Miller, pres-ident of Vera Wang Licensing, who helped Wang intro-duce her fi rst fragrance in 2002. “Vera has always been about modernity — and Bouquet is a new expression of a fl oral scent. Flower Princess also takes a modern ap-proach — we want to create a fragrance wardrobe for many princesses, of all ages.” More Princess-themed scents will be rolled out in coming years, she added.

Vera Wang Bouquet, while intended to be part of the Signature fragrance franchise, is a new scent, with a different bottle. Concocted by International Flavors & Fragrances, Bouquet has top notes of dew drops, Sicilian bergamot and black current leaves; a heart of paperwhite narcissus and honeysuckle, and a dry-down of lavender musk accord, Moroccan cedar and white iris root.

Bouquet’s bottle references Signature’s classic pyra-mid shape, but is taller with faceted corners intended to evoke pleats in a wedding gown, said Miller. “It’s a sleeker silhouette, which refl ects the body-conscious gowns that brides are favoring today,” she said.

Eaux de parfum in two sizes will be offered: 1.7 oz. for $67 and 3.4 oz. for $87. Three ancillaries will also be marketed: a 5-oz. body lotion for $50, a 5-oz. shower gel for $45 and a 6.7-oz. body creme for $85.

At launch, Bouquet will be available in fewer than 500 doors, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom. It is also expected to be distributed in travel retail, France, the U.K., Australia, Asia, Germany, the Netherlands and Greece.

An ad campaign, shot by Paolo Roversi, is expected to break in April fashion, beauty and lifestyle maga-zines. In addition, more than 10 million scented pieces are expected to be distributed in the fi rst six months the fragrance is on the market.

Flower Princess, concocted by Firmenich, has top notes of lush green ivy, shimmering tangerine and

dewy water lily; a heart of orange fl ower petals, Moroccan rose, exotic jasmine sam-bac and Riviera mimosa, and a drydown of apricot skin, amber, precious woods and musk. Princess’ signature heart bottle is again used, although it is tinted petal pink and is topped with a silver-toned band stud-ded with pink crystals. The original Princess bottle is tinted lavender and topped with a gold-toned, crystal-studded band. This scent was developed to appeal to the Asian mar-ket, which is traditionally not a high-volume fragrance market.

“This project was born out of a desire to develop a fragrance for the Asian market, as it is not traditionally a high-volume fra-grance market,” said Michael D’Arminio, vice president of global marketing for the Marc Jacobs and Vera Wang fragrance brands at Coty Prestige. “While we think this scent — a light fruity fl oral — will work globally, we will launch it fi rst in Asia and then roll out elsewhere.” Flower Princess will be a limited edition offering in the U.S. and most other global markets when it arrives in April, but a permanent introduction in Asia, where it is shipping now.

“Flower Princess encompasses the kawaii movement of Japan — a cultural obsession with cute, adorable, spirited items,” added Miller. “It’s very whimsical.”

In the U.S., eaux de toilette in two sizes will be offered: 1.7 oz. for $52 and 3.4 oz. for $68. Two ancillaries, a 5-oz. body lotion for $32 and a 5-oz. body polish for $30, will also be sold. In the U.S. it will be available in about 2,200 department store doors.

A national advertising campaign featur-ing Camilla Belle will begin running in May fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines in the U.S.

While neither of the executives would discuss sales projections or advertising spending for either fragrance, industry sources estimated that Bouquet would generate retail sales of about $20 million in its

fi rst year on counter in the U.S., while Flower Princess could do an equal number globally in the same time frame. Industry sources estimated that about $5 mil-lion would be spent on advertising and promotion for each fragrance in their fi rst year on counter.

— Julie Naughton

6 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

The Beauty Report

Jami Morse Heidegger, who built Kiehl’s Since 1851 into one of the brightest marquee names of the Nineties’ indie boom,

is stepping back into the ring.Seven years after she sold Kiehl’s to L’Oréal, Heidegger is

developing a collection of fi ve facial skin care products aimed at women with mature skin and designed with high-octane ingredients and matching lofty price points — perhaps in the neighborhood of $500 a jar.

For an overall corporate identity, she has settled on Morse Laboratories, the original name of the business of her late fa-ther, Aaron Morse. “My team felt it was needed to incorporate the Morse heritage,” she said in a recent interview in New York. The fl edgling squad will operate out of offi ces on a 25-acre spread in Malibu, Calif., near her home in Chatsworth, where she lives with her husband, Klaus, and their three children.

The launch date has been targeted for this spring, prob-ably April, and Heidegger said her inclination is to launch the line with an exclusive at Apothia at Fred Segal Melrose in Los Angeles. That decision was made as a gesture of thanks, Heidegger said, as an acknowledgement that Apothia founder Ron Robinson was an early supporter of Kiehl’s.

While her distribution planning has not taken shape, Heidegger said a logical step beyond Fred Segal would be spe-cialty stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus or Barneys New York.

The impetus for the new line grew out of her semiretirement lifestyle com-bined with her lingering ties to old days in downtown New York. After selling Kiehl’s in April 2000, Heidegger at fi rst felt the loss of the daily rush, but as her fi ve-year non-compete took hold, she learned to appreciate “the joys of manicures and personal trainers,” she admitted, while acknowledging that she still had the urge to dabble in product formulation. She found herself scanning trade journals for ingredient news. Moreover, Heidegger kept in touch with her colleague from Kiehl’s, the former chief chemist Stephen Musumeci.

He formulated products for her own personal use on her 47-year-old skin. “I wanted the best ingredients,” she said, “the highest concentration possible for my skin. And I didn’t care what it cost.”

This was in sharp contrast from her middle-of-the-road marketing at Kiehl’s, where “I didn’t want anyone to have redness and experience irritation.” Moreover, in building Kiehl’s, “we were moderately priced so the products would be accessible.”

Obviously, some urges never died. “What I loved about the industry was creat-ing, doing our own products.”

She clearly stated, “I’m not looking to recapture what Kiehl’s did.” In fact, Heidegger has words of praise for what L’Oréal did with her offspring. For one, the French beauty giant managed to “marry the past and future to the present by bringing innovation.”

But now she is looking to launch a line that fi ts her present needs, “my mature, dryer, older skin.” Heidegger understands that marketing the private concoctions that Musumeci whipped up for her will land her in a much pricier neighborhood. “I’ve been using it for years and I didn’t know what it costs. I had no idea. It didn’t matter. I wanted the best,” she said, estimating that a 2-oz. jar of cream might retail for $550 to $600. “It’s not for everyone,” she added.

Heidegger had hesitated to reenter the cosmetics business, even as Klaus grew restless with retirement, fi rst dabbling in an energy drink business, then acquiring an athletic shoe com-pany, MBT, based on Masai physiology and walking habits. She admits she worried that a new venture would be perceived as an attempt to duplicate the success of Kiehl’s, or perhaps, worse yet, not succeeding as well. But as her children grew up, she began thinking in terms of being able to “make a contribu-tion to help people feel better,” particularly those in her ma-turing age group.

Heidegger honed a holistic routine of exercise, nutrition and beauty. The fi rst beauty products, whose packaging is still being fi nished, are an antiaging face gel and an eye cream, with

a body product and sunscreen in the works. Musumeci explained that the formula-tion is aimed at creating a highly effi cient vehicle to deliver the active ingredients deeply into the skin. The face gel is aimed at activating and nourishing skin-cell-producing fi broblasts. It contains white tea and pomegranate, and the base of the formula contains a blend of fatty acid-based moisturizing oils of shea butter, squal-ane, cholesterol esters and humectants that can hold 50 percent of their weight in moisture, according to the company. Vitamin E was added to boost the skin’s natural SPF to protect against photo aging. A delivery system using water-soluble silicon gel was designed to allow aqueous vitamin C to be released during the day, with the goal of reducing wrinkles and fi ne lines and preventing further damage. Vitamin A is included for conversion into retinoic acid, and superoxide dismutase enzyme is also used to reduce wrinkles, scar tissue and lighten dark or hyperpig-mentation. Proline and saffl ower oil round out the formula.

“The thing that differentiates these products is the concentration,” said Musumeci, noting that he “doubled, tripled or quadrupled” the usual dosages.

— Pete Born

Jami Morse Heidegger Prepares to Reenter the Beauty Fray

Vera Wang: A Return Engagement With New Scents

Jami Morse Heidegger

The Flower Princess ad.

HEID

EGGE

R PH

OTO

BY J

OHN

AQUI

NO

By Molly Prior

Ricky’s — the New York City retailer with a crass sense of humor and irreverent style — is growing up.

That’s not to suggest Ricky’s is doing away with the array of adult toys — partially shrouded behind a beaded curtain — or the rainbow of colorful wigs lined up behind the cash register. No, that quirky, smirk-inducing mer-chandise is staying, but Ricky’s is steadily working to re-inforce its primary role as a purveyor of beauty supplies, heavily frequented by hairstylists and makeup junkies.

The retailer is focused on refi ning its beauty mix — for instance, it recently added Frédéric Fekkai hair care — and is methodically opening more doors in the New York metro area.

The aim is to follow upper-middle-class New Yorkers — pushed to the boroughs by Manhattan’s ris-ing cost of living — to new markets, said Todd Kenig, who co-owns the business with his brother Ricky. The brothers’ father owned Love’s, a discount beauty store chain that he ran in the Seventies and Eighties.

Ricky’s has stores in East Hampton, N.Y., and Brooklyn and is scouting out real estate in nearby Hoboken and Jersey City, N.J.

The chain — which has one store outside New York state in Miami’s South Beach — aims to have 22 doors by March, and has a long-term growth target of 50 to 100 stores, said Todd Kenig. He added that a strategic buyer — not that the company is actively looking for one, he clarifi ed — could potentially power Ricky’s into a 1,000- to 2,000-store national chain.

Last year Ricky’s revenue reached $40 million, an increase of about 24 percent over 2006, according to the company.

The Kenig brothers — along with fellow owner Dominick Costello, who serves as president — have inched toward a more traditional corporate structure in recent years. In February 2006 the company established a company headquarters, complete with a human re-sources department and a creative team. Prior to that, the Kenigs and Costello each had offi ces in three sepa-rate Ricky’s stores. Ricky Kenig — the creative force in the trio — still works out of Ricky’s SoHo store.

“I try to stay out of the loop. It’s too stressful,” said Ricky Kenig, adding his proximity to the store serves as the inspiration for the chain’s private products, Ricky’s Care. The private label line, which accounts for about 5 percent of the mix, was reintroduced in November. Its products — ranging from blond bobby pins to a mini fl at

iron for touch-ups — spill across a 188-page catalogue. Ricky Kenig, still brimming with ideas, said the effort will likely extend to color cosmetics. The store’s cur-rent house cosmetics line is called Mattese. “Private label is one of the bigger growth areas for us,” he said. “It hurts us to sell products that we can make better.”

Last year, the chain opened a salon — called Shears, Hustle and Blow — in three Ricky’s doors. The concept, which requires about 300 to 500 square feet of space, provides a testing ground for private label products and lends credibility to the aisles of hair-related mer-chandise, said the management team. Todd Kenig said regardless of how many cuts the salon does, its pres-ence guarantees a knowledgeable stylist in the store to recommend products. As for whether Ricky’s will continue to make room for salons in its doors, Costello said, “Every [potential new] store we look at, we are going to see if we can possibly squeeze a salon in there. It’s a concept we like, but it’s not our main priority.”

Ricky’s newest store, which opened last month at 373 Third Avenue, features a display of Frédéric Fekkai hair care product just beyond a row of brightly patterned rain boots and makeup cases. The Frédéric Fekkai assort-ment marks the beginning of Ricky’s professional hair

care section, stocked with Phyto, PureOlogy, Bumble and bumble and Philip B. Above the bottles of premi-um-priced shampoos are top-of-the-line hair dryers, fl at irons and curling irons. An aisle over is an assortment of natural hair care lines, including Dessert Essence, Nature’s Gate, Alba and L’Oréal Nature’s Therapy.

Beauty devotees have lauded Ricky’s for stocking limited distribution lines, like Kérastase shampoo and L’Oréal Paris Elnett hair spray. The Ricky’s team said it buys 70 percent of its goods directly from vendors. For items the store can’t get, it gets creative. In the case of Elnett hair spray, Ricky Kenig noticed the product was available at drugstores in Japan, Hong Kong and the U.K. So he enlisted the help of friends abroad. In ex-change for T-shirts and jeans from the U.S., several of his friends bought Elnett off shelves there and shipped them to the U.S. The trading went on for a few years.

Ricky’s is bent on being known as a “beauty fi rst” retailer, but its charm stems from the eclectic assort-ment. Items — such as neon nail polish and T-shirts with cheeky sayings — have also helped Ricky’s survive competition from the regional drugstore chain Duane Reade, Sephora and Bath & Body Works, pointed out Ricky Kenig. “Since we opened our doors in 1989, no-body has come close to copying us,” he declared.

Its smattering of off-the-wall items also gave Ricky’s the chutzpah to dabble in other categories, including adult merchandise and seasonal Halloween items, both of which the retailer began to add in 1997. Ricky’s in-and-out costume business has exploded, as over the years the company has transformed its stores into New Yorkers’ unoffi cial Halloween headquarters. Each fall, Ricky’s stores are packed with Halloween costumes and novelties. The retailer also opens temporary cos-tume shops in Florida and on Long Island, said Todd Kenig, who oversees the Halloween business. The ef-fort started in 2002 with two temporary shops, and next year it is projected to grow to 20 units. Todd Kenig es-timates Halloween sales now account for 20 to 25 per-cent of Ricky’s total revenue. Ricky’s sells costumes year-round at its TriBeCa store, where beauty prod-ucts occupy the 5,000 square feet at street level and Halloween merchandise fi lls the 7,000-square-foot bot-tom fl oor. Soon, the store plans to add costume rentals.

Refl ecting on the Ricky’s culture, Costello said, “It’s very hard to do what we do. We are fl exible and change things at a moment’s notice. We are not afraid to take chances,” he said, “Other companies wouldn’t dare to do what we do.”

Markwins Wet ‘n’ Wild is diving into the mineral makeup market with Beauty Benefits, a new col-

lection of color cosmetics containing lotus extract and marine minerals as the key ingredient.

Wet ‘n’ Wild is entering the mineral makeup race as the original mass contenders such as Physicians Formula, L’Oréal Paris and Neutrogena are still showing growth, according to Markwins executives.

“Consumers are more focused on health and beauty, and not just food-tied products in terms of the greening of the global economy,” said Shawn Haynes, senior vice president, marketing and global brand de-velopment of Markwins. “We saw an opportunity to target lower-income, beauty-focused consumers since there wasn’t anyone out there speaking to the Wet ‘n’ Wild customer. There are lots of ‘good for you’ products out there targeting higher-income customers, but those might already be people purchasing organic items, so this opens up the mineral category to a whole different audience,” he said, referring to lower-income customers who might not be able to afford pricier organic items.

According to Information Resources Inc., Wet ‘n’ Wild generated $67.7 million in sales in food, drug and mass stores for the 52-week period ended Dec. 2, a sales increase of 1.8 percent compared with the previous year. Sales fi gures exclude Wal-Mart.

According to Haynes, the positioning of the Beauty Benefi ts products focuses on a “good-for-you mentality,” while still incorporating glamour with a “fun Wet ‘n’ Wild edge.”

The Beauty Benefi t range will be launched in February at Wal-Mart, Meijer, Pathmark and HEB. With items designed for the eyes, lips and face, the products contain Lotus Marine Minerals, a com-plex derived from lotus fl ower extract and marine and earth-derived minerals from kelp and sea-weed. The golden seaweed is meant to restore hydration for up to eight hours, prevent infl ammation and protect DNA against UV-induced damage, according to Markwins executives. Marine fennel is included to improve skin’s radiance, detoxify and restore the hydrolipidic barrier. Offering antiaging and antioxidant benefi ts that claim to be twice as strong as green tea, the complex is also designed to brighten the complexion and increase moisture up to 25 percent for up to eight hours.

The new Beauty Benefi ts line is positioned to be an extension of the Wet ‘n’ Wild brand. Haynes said that instead of putting the new collection next to the regular Wet ‘n’ Wild items on store shelves, the company is hoping for a separate 2-foot display space for the new line, there-by positioning it with other “good-for-you” products. Retailing from $4.99 for Eye Brilliance Shimmer Sticks and Dual Effects Eye Pencils to $9.99 for Fresh Effects Foundation SPF 15, the items are priced 3 percent higher than the traditional price point.

Beauty Benefi ts will be supported with a regional print campaign, in addition to in-store promotions with visuals and makeup artists, and other efforts such as in-store mobile phone text messaging, where consumers can download an instant rebate coupon.

— Michelle Edgar

7WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

WWD.COM

PHILOSOPHY INC. HAS TAPPED FORMER PROCTER & GAMBLE executive Gretchen Price as its chief fi nancial offi cer.

Price, who will assume her new post Monday, will help round out Philosophy’s management team led by chief executive offi cer Michael McNamara, who joined the company in May from Neutrogena Corp. Prior to Price’s appointment, Philosophy’s chief operating offi cer, Mark Harshbarger, oversaw the cfo responsibilities.

The executive addition comes one year after the company was acquired by private equity fi rm The Carlyle Group for an estimated $450 million. Philosophy’s founder, Cristina Carlino, continues to serve as its executive chairman.

Price’s 31-year tenure at P&G included a host of fi nancial roles, including treasurer, controller and general manager. Most recently, she served as P&G’s vice president of fi nance, global op-erations, before taking a leave of absence in March.

Commenting on the appointment, McNamara said in a state-ment, “Her broad accounting and fi nancial background has been honed through more than three decades of experience in multiple divisions and disciplines of one of the world’s leading consumer products companies. With Gretchen’s leadership and expertise, we will build upon our strong foundation and talent pool…and propel Philosophy to the next level.” McNamara added that the company is looking to fi ll several more executive posts, including marketing director and head of sales and education.

Philosophy — which is sold in Sephora, on QVC and in a num-ber of department stores, generated net wholesale volume of roughly $120 million to $150 million in 2006, according to industry sources. It had planned to relaunch a comprehensive color cos-metics collection — recruiting Kevyn Aucoin Beauty co-founder Eric Sakas for the purpose — later this year. Those plans have been put on hold as the company focuses on fi ne-tuning its cur-rent business. McNamara said that, since joining the fi rm seven months ago, his fi rst order of business has been to redirect growth back to Philosophy’s core categories, namely skin care, fragrance and bath and body products. “The next step is to prepare the com-pany for dramatic growth,” he said, adding that recruiting talent is one element of that strategy. The long-term goal, he said, is to take the company public.

— M.P.

Ricky’s Flirts With Outer NYC Markets

ADDING UP BEAUTY

Select items from Beauty Benefi ts.

Ricky’s recently added Frédéric

Fekkai to its mix.

Philosophy Names Gretchen Price CFOWet ‘n’ Wild Aims to Show ‘Benefi ts’ of Minerals

PHOT

O BY

ROB

ERT

MIT

RA

NEW YORK — Retailers hope Coty Inc. will plow forward with the bevy of new beauty prod-ucts Del Laboratories has on its docket for 2008. Coty recently acquired Del Labs’ parent com-pany, DLI Holding Corp., from the New York private equity firm Kelso & Co. The deal, which closed Dec. 31, raises questions about Coty’s future plans for the flagship Sally Hansen brand.

Retail sources said they are crossing their fi ngers that most of the items still make it to their shelves.

Coty would not comment on the terms of the deal, but industry sources estimate the beauty firm paid roughly $800 million to Kelso & Co., which bought Del Labs for $465 million in 2004.

With the purchase of Del Labs, Coty immediately scores the num-ber-one nail category leader — quite a feat when considering the fact that the Sally Hansen brand competes against much bigger companies such as Revlon and L’Oréal. According to industry statistics, Sally Hansen con-trols more than a 41 percent share of the nail care business — an all-time high for the company.

Sally Hansen executives hope to keep the momentum growing with several new initiatives — includ-ing the revisiting of pen technology that took the industry by storm in the Eighties. Del Labs senior vice president of Sally Hansen market-ing Bill Boraczek, however, is quick to explain this pen is much different technology than the felt tip. Called Color Quick, the pen dispenses color via a brush activated with a click. Color Quick will retail for $7.95.

Sally Hansen’s partner-ship with fashion designer Tracy Reese has been pro-ductive. The brand released the spring 2008 collection inspired by Reese’s spring runway show at retail. The shades include Arabian Night, Tunisian Sand, Sumptuous Petal, Spicy Scarlet, Cherry Glaze, Feverish Rose and Sultry Fuchsia.

As products that reduce the time required to accom-plish beauty tasks are piquing consumer interest, Sally Hansen has introduced Insta-Dry Speed Dry Drops and Insta-Grip Fast Dry Base Coat. “These are just like in a salon,” said Boraczek. A unique item based on pres-tige options is the new Insta-Brite Nail Whitener, which Boraczek said brings prestige fashion trends to mass.

In the nail care arena, Sally Hansen has Nail Nutrition Daily Growth Treatment and a new category for the fi rm — di-etary supplements to help nails stay healthy.

Two years ago, Sally Hansen expanded its foot care fran-chise. New items to the line include Just Feet Cracked Heel Repair Crème and Just Feet Spa Peppermint Foot Stick. Many retailers have been re-ducing slow-moving items to make more room for the Sally Hansen foot care items.

Inroads have been made in hair removal and it is in this category that Sally Hansen is making a “green” pitch. “There are some categories where it makes sense to use natural in-gredients,” explained Annette Devita, vice president of marketing for Sally Hansen. Natural honey is being used in a new wax hair remover for the body, as well as a wax hair remover for the face. The company is enhancing its breakthrough spray-on/shower-off hair remover by adding a silk protein softening complex and rich triple but-ters. Natural is also an operative word in new butter lip products, namely Natural Butter Lip Shine and Natural Butter Lip Shimmer.

In addition to adding natural choices to lip, the company has ex-tended its Lip Infl ation line to in-clude extreme color tints. There is Volumizing Lip Shield and Comfort Shine Lip Glaze. To please women who want one item for multiple

purposes, Sally Hansen of-fers the new Complete Care Lip Therapy, which treats dry, rough and damaged lips

In the implement cat-egory, Sally Hansen’s La Cross items have undergone a major overhaul of the look and design of everyday implements to make them not only more functional, but more appealing, too. A few standouts include a foot smoothing disk, comfort grip

cuticle nippers and a detail mini eyelash curler.The new items were on display in the Manhattan

apartment designed by Jonathan Adler, intended to rep-resent where Sally Hansen as an icon would reside. New advertising plays off a real-life Sally Hansen character asking shoppers if they’ve seen Sally lately. According to Del Labs, many consumers believe there is a real Sally Hansen behind the brand. All items mentioned will hit stores in the spring.

Naturally Bare Honey Wax for home use.

8 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

The Beauty Report WWD.COM

Del Has Full Spring LineupBy Andrea Nagel

A Manhattan-based nutritionist has teamed up with a mass market beauty company

to create a line of skin care products con-taining antioxidants believed to have antiag-ing effects.

Woodridge Labs, the maker of Professional Vita-K Solution and DermaFreeze 365, has partnered with nutritionist Keri Glassman, the founder of the KeriBar, a nutrition bar company, for Skin Appétit, a fi ve-item line formulated with Glassman’s Nutrx 8 Complex. The complex, she explained, is a combination of food extracts, minus para-bens, of blueberries, cantaloupe, grape seed, yogurt, honey, fi g, walnut and dark chocolate. Each item in the line contains Nutrx 8, in ad-dition to other ingredients, such as vitamin B5, vitamin E, macadamia seed oil, vitamin C, aloe and tea tree oil.

“This is so up my alley. This is exactly what I preach to people in my practice,” said Glassman of the ingredients in Skin Appétit.

“All the components work together as a unit, like making a salad.”

The line, said Joe Millin of Woodridge Labs, should appeal to those looking for nat-ural ingredients. But the two were careful to not “Birkenstock the brand,” Glassman said.

Skin Appétit includes a Detoxifying Nutri-Cleanser, Optim-Eyes Firming Eye Gel, Nutri-Collagen Daily Moisturizer with SPF 15, Nutri-Moisture Balm Stick and a Nutri-Pro Night Serum. Each item will sell for $14.99. Products enter Rite Aid, Longs and Walgreens this March.

Glassman’s business, A Nutritious Life, will support the line with TV appearanc-es: She is a regular contributor to the CBS “Early Show,” and appears as a beauty and health expert on Fox TV’s “The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.” Her book, “The Snack Factor Diet,” will be released in pa-perback this spring and will include 10 ad-ditional pages on beauty. Woodridge is sup-porting the line with print and syndicated TV ads. First-year sales targets are $12 mil-lion at retail. Woodridge Labs, added Millin, is discontinuing its Virtual Laser skin care line, which launched in 2006.

Food and Beauty ProsPartner for Products

LOS ANGELES — Sunset Tan is going national.

The L.A.-based company is capi-talizing on the spotlight provided by the E network to peddle its brand of tanning salon to franchisees. The six-unit chain is expected to balloon to 50 units within a year and 400 to 500 in the next three to four years, according to Sunset Tan co-founder Jeff Bozz.

“The show [is] a major platform for us and pushed everything fast-er,” said Bozz of the reality show se-ries that was originally developed in 2006 about running Sunset Tan. “We are putting our seat belts on and holding on.”

Franchise locations are planned for Florida, Arizona, Texas and

California, where Sunset Tan has been concentrated to date. Units range from 1,500 to 1,800 square feet, have up to 10 treatment rooms and are ideally placed in high-end strip malls. Bozz reported that there are already 1,300 franchisee applicants.

Bozz said he, fellow founder Devin Haman and Larry Rudolph, who also is president of ReignDeer Entertainment, each retain equal shares of the franchise operating company. George Maloof, who helms the Maloof family’s fl otilla of prop-erties, including the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and the National Basketball Association’s Sacramento Kings, holds a small stake in the company. A Sunset Tan is slated to enter the Palms later

this year.Also on the docket for Sunset

Tan is expanding its product line-up and launching an apparel line. Manufactured by California Tan, Sunset Tan sells four stockkeeping units of indoor tanning products that range in price from $90 to $110. An outdoor line is set to debut this month, with four sku’s sold at yet-to-be-determined prices aimed at re-tailers such as Walgreens, as well as Sunset Tan salons.

Maui and Sons developed the Sunset Tan apparel, which is also scheduled for a January release. The 30-sku collection features tank tops, bikinis, shorts, sweatpants, hats and sandals that run from $15 to $100.

— Rachel Brown

Reality Show Success Spurs Sunset Tan Growth

Sally Hansen’s ColorQuickpolish pen.

Nail Essentials dietary supplements.

Manhattan-basednutritionistKeri Glassman.

Skin Appétit enters stores in March.

The HBA Report WWD.COM

Athens-based skin care marketer Apivita is shifting its focus to the international stage, launching new

products and upgrading packaging in a bid to top 32.5 million euros, or $47.9 million at current exchange, in sales for 2008.

The fi rm, which was founded with the opening of an Athens pharmacy in 1972 — followed by a product line called Propoline in 1979 — has up to this point made prod-ucts for the domestic Greek market and about 20 export markets. Now, the aim is to develop new products tailored for specifi c markets like the U.S., Europe and Japan.

This means meeting consumer preferences as well as legislative regulations in each market, according to vice president and export director Alexandros Argyropoulos. While the fi rm has no plans to customize new formulations from scratch for each market, it intends to make variations to products based on the demands of a particular market, according to Argyropoulos.

Apivita, which takes its name from two Latin words — apis, which means bee, and vita, which means life — markets some 300 stockkeep-ing units across several brands, in-cluding the fi rm’s original Propoline line, a 100-item collection of hair, oral, skin and body care products ($7-$20). There’s also the 150-item Aromatherapy line, a face and body care collection that will soon be re-named Apivita ($12-$40); Express, a line of 25 masques with sales of about three million units a year ($9-$24), and Apitherapy, a brand of nu-tritional supplements like bee pol-len ($80-$100).

The company, which had rev-enues of 26 million euros, or $38.3 million, in 2007, a 22 percent in-crease from 2006, also markets a line of hotel amenities and a roster of spa treatments.

All of Apivita’s brands are being repackaged to “unify” the different lines, said Argyropoulos during a recent in-terview in New York. The Propoline range, which execu-tives claim has a market share of about 40 percent in the Greek pharmacy channel on annual sales of about 600,000 bottles of shampoo alone, is slated to roll out in the U.S. with new packaging early next month.

Additionally, Apivita plans to launch outside Greece in spring a line of seven antiwrinkle and fi rming skin care products called Queen Bee. The line, which replaces the treatment component of the existing Aromatherapy line, will employ royal jelly and honey and will include one in-gestible product. Serums and creams in the line, which

are designed to stimulate the production of collagen-pro-ducing fi broblasts, will be priced from 60 euros, or $88.35, to 75 euros, or $110.45.

Apivita founder Nikos Koutsianas, who has mixed the disciplines of pharmacy and beekeeping, was inspired to launch the brand by his love of Greek fl ora. To this day, Apivita maintains a garden on the island of Kos contain-ing 256 therapeutic plant species that were said to be used by Hippocrates.

“The bees have what it takes to make cosmetic prod-ucts,” he said, pointing to the honey and propolis (a waxy substance employed for its antiseptic properties) pro-duced within beehives. Bees also inspired the Apivita logo, which is a representation of the Bee of Malia, a piece of Minoan jewelry from the 16th century B.C.

The fi rm, which claims to be the oldest producer of natural cosmetics in Greece, also contends that with its in-house re-search and development depart-ment, it is the only company pro-ducing extracts from Greek herbs on its own. Apivita’s skin and body care products employ green tea extract and its hair care prod-ucts feature 22 organic extracts, including rosemary. Products are free of parabens, propylene glycol and silicone.

Apivita operates a flagship in Athens as well as a corner in Notos Galleries, the Greek depart-ment store. It also has distribution in 4,000 pharmacies in Greece, and some spas there. The fi rm plans to open a new manufacturing plant in mid-2009 that is to contain a spa for employees and VIPs.

As part of its international focus, Apivita plans to expand into six department store corners in

China as well as open fl agships in Beijing and Shanghai.“Asia is our biggest area of international growth,” said

Argyropoulos. In Hong Kong, he noted, the brand has seven points of sale, including one fl agship and two de-partment store corners. In August, Apivita entered the South Korean market, followed by Russia in October.

In the U.S., the brand is carried in nearly 200 locations including C.O. Bigelow, selected Nordstrom stores, Studio Fred Segal and Pure Beauty. The lines that are best repre-sented in the U.S. are Propoline and Express. International growth plans also include the U.S. market, where “we are looking at a U.S. fl agship as a possibility down the road,” said Argyropoulos.

— Matthew W. Evans

Apivita Sets Goal to Go Global in 2008

By Rachel Brown

LOS ANGELES — Another eyebrow queen cometh to conquer the celebrity lair.

Eliza Petrescu, the force behind Eliza’s Eyes, is opening a Southern California outpost this month at Exhale Spa in Santa Monica. That puts her squarely in arch-shaping territory, where Anastasia’s, Damone’s and Valerie’s tweezing powers now exist.

Petrescu, who signed up with Exhale more than a year ago after a seven-year relationship with Avon’s Salon & Spa ended, is confi dent that her brow battle skills will captivate choosy West Coast customers. “There is only one Eliza,” she asserted. “I always believe as long as you give more than 100 percent, you’re always going to be busy.”

And Eliza’s Eyes is nothing if not busy. Associates train a minimum of 40 hours, see 20 to 25 clients a day and charge $65 to $85 per brow visit. (Petrescu sees 40 clients a day and charges $125 per visit. “I am more expensive than anybody in the world,” she boasted.) At least four associates will operate in two rooms at Exhale in Santa Monica, while fi ve associates use four rooms at Eliza’s Eyes in New York.

Although she wouldn’t discuss revenues, Petrescu predicted her Santa Monica business would compare with what she makes at other co-branded Exhale locations, including New York spots at 980 Madison Avenue and 150 Central Park South. She also runs House of Brows in Southhampton, N.Y., and established her fi rst Eliza’s Eyes outside of New York six months ago at Exhale in Dallas.

Eventually, Petrescu said, Eliza’s Eyes would fi lter through all eight current Exhale Spas, with Chicago and Boston next up on her to-do list. Setup takes two months each time she enters a spa, and Petrescu personally approves associates, who have to be licensed aestheticians. The associates are employed by Exhale, but Petrescu acts as an independent contractor.

“It is really a great marriage,” said Petrescu of her partnership with Exhale. “Exhale knew the potential. I am a brand. They know I bring 400 to 500 clients a week. They knew the clients would follow me.” In Southern California, she suggested

that celebrity regulars the likes of Mary J. Blige, Natasha Richardson and Kim Cattrall would stop by when they’re not at their New York digs.

Susan Tomback, spa director of Exhale and business manager for Eliza’s Eyes, said about 50 percent of Eliza’s Eyes customers in New

York are crossovers, meaning they go to Exhale for other services besides brow shaping. “Eliza herself really believes in the Exhale products as well,” she said. “You will be in her chair, and she will recommend a facial, which helps our business.”

With the exception of Dallas, where Petrescu pointed out that beauty is defi ned by “big jewelry and puffy hair,” she said brow styling doesn’t change much from location to loca-tion. In fact, she stressed that keys to her success are that she doesn’t follow trends and sticks to what’s appropriate for a woman’s age.

“I don’t believe in what is on the runway. I leave people’s eyebrows as natural as possible,” she said. “If you are 70

years old and have Brooke Shields’ eyebrows [or] if you have Joan Crawford’s eyebrows when you are 20, people are going to

run away.” For those who want to keep up Petrescu’s work at home, she launched

a product line in late 2006. That line now totals about 25 items that sell at Exhale, where the $28 Chunky Brow Filler and $28 Clear Brow Shaper are

bestsellers. She is beefi ng up the eye pencil lineup this month and is adding a compact with four colors for the eyebrows, eyes, cheeks and lips. “I believe that Eliza’s Eyes [products] should stay around the eyes and the face,” said Petrescu, who noted she isn’t tied to a product exclusivity deal with Exhale. “I defi nitely want to expand to have the products worldwide.”

But before the world succumbs to Eliza’s Eyes, Petrescu has to triumph in Southern California. She’s introducing herself to locals from Jan. 8 to 15, will han-dle eyebrows in In Style’s suite at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills for the Golden Globes, which airs Jan. 13, and is planning to return three months later to make sure everything is up to snuff. Petrescu has no doubt that Eliza’s Eyes will be a hit on the West Coast. “You know what they say,” the Romanian-born brow guru con-cluded, “[those] who make it in New York make it anywhere.”

Brow Maven Eliza Opens Post at Exhale Spa

Propoline conditioner and shampoo.

9WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

Avon Products Inc. has tapped re-nowned personal finance expert

and award-winning television host Suze Orman to act as “special personal finance adviser” to Avon representatives, to offer them money management advice.

“For over a century — 34 years before women won the right to vote — Avon has been providing women the opportunity to earn money and achieve economic independence,” said Andrea Jung, Avon’s chairman and chief executive offi cer, in a state-ment Thursday. “Suze shares our deep commitment to empower women, and working together we can form a pow-erful partnership to continue to ad-vance this important agenda.”

The long-term partnership will launch for Avon’s 500,000 represen-tatives in the U.S. this month, with plans to expand globally in the future. Through the initiative, Avon represen-tatives and employees will be able to contact Orman for individualized ad-vice through an “Ask Suze” mailbox feature on their YourAvon.com com-pany site. Additional fi nancial manage-ment tools will be provided for things such as how to create a will and trust and evaluate insurance. Orman will also be featured at events, “webinars” and taped Webcasts.

Orman said she fi rst got involved with Avon by chairing the judging panel of the Hello Tomorrow Fund in March. It was at an Avon representative con-ference in August that Orman became interested in partnering with Avon, as they shared a similar message.

“I saw that the Avon reps were the women I’ve been reaching out to for all these years — they are the women call-ing into my show and here they were all in front of me,” said Orman. “Middle America only needs that extra $2,000 to $5,000 to make their lives work. For me, it’s about motivating and showing women how to make more from the money they already have by making the right decisions.”

— Michelle Edgar

Avon Signs Orman As Financial Adviser

An aesthetician working at Eliza’s Eyes.

ELIZ

A’S

EYES

PHO

TO B

Y TY

LER

BOYE

WWD.COM10 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

Scent of WarholTo the Editor:

I read with interest your story about Andy Warhol and Bond No. 9 — describing Bond’s latest Warhol-inspired fragrance (WWD, Dec. 28, page 6). I would like to add to the histori-cal record.

I personally produced the fi rst Andy Warhol fragrance with Andy himself for a Pop Art Store called “The Museum of Merchandise,” held by the Arts Council of the YMHA in Philadelphia (now the Gershman Y). The show opened on May 10, 1967. At the time I was the chairman of the Arts Council and a creative director (along with Audrey Sabol) of the Museum of Merchandise, which featured useful objects designed by artists.

I asked Andy to participate and he suggested doing a perfume. I took him to a small perfum-er who had a shop near Washington Square, around 12th Street in New York. The Arts Council paid for the manufacture. Andy said he wanted the “juice” to be yellow and smell like Canoe, a popular lemon-scented cologne. He decided to call it “You’re In” (say it fast). He wanted it bot-tled in a silver Coke bottle. I found a stopper that would hold a label and had labels designed and printed. When the show opened, it was written up in Fairchild’s Home Furnishings Daily and The New York Times, among other publications, and I was invited to appear — with the fragrance and other objects including Christo’s wedding dress — on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. By then, Coke had threatened to sue. To avoid a lawsuit, we began selling the perfume in a plain glass bottle and gave the silver Coke bottle (spray-painted at The Factory) as a gift-with-purchase. I think we charged $10. I have one of the few remaining bottles with the label on the stopper and have loaned it to several museum exhibitions.

Records of the exhibit are in the Joan Kron Papers and the Audrey Sabol Papers in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

Joan Kron Contributing editor at large, Allure magazine

Letter to the Editor

Banana Republic Names Simon Kneen Creative Head Continued from page onethe line — just like competitor J. Crew is doing with J. Crew Collection. “If the right stand-alone made sense…,” he stressed. “We’re constantly talking about it.”

It’s hard to avoid comparisons between the two companies. Banana Republic is a division of Gap Inc., which was once led by Millard “Mickey” Drexler. Now, as chairman and chief executive offi cer of J. Crew, Drexler has put his energies into turning the formerly bland preppy business into fashion with an eccentric fl ourish. In the process, he introduced Collection, a handpicked assortment of luxe, limited edition items that offi cially launched online with a mini Web site. On

April 22, the company will open its fi rst Collection store, a 2,500-square-foot unit at 1035 Madison Avenue near 79th Street in New York.

Banana Republic quietly launched Monogram for men in the fall. Women’s will launch this spring. Sold in 30 Banana Republic stores, the line is described by the company: “BR Monogram, our sig-

nature label collection, is defi ned by re-markably rich fabrics, distinctive details and modern silhouettes for the most elo-quent expression of style. Available in limited quantities.”

Items shown online included a men’s wool-cashmere chalk stripe navy suit blazer for $425; short-sleeve women’s gray suit jacket, $225; cashmere men’s pinstripe blazer, $800; hand-knit sweater jacket, $300, and treasure green buckle dress, $138.

J. Crew Collection, which had a soft launch online in the spring, features items such as a Toscana shearling jacket for $2,000; a red cashmere opera coat, $1,300, and a tangerine Mina cashmere jacket, $395. Collection pieces have un-usual prints or colors to distinguish them from the run-of-the-mill. For example, the Bahia silk dress, $245, was inspired by a vintage scarf, and the Campo de’ fi ore bal-lerina dress, $285, is made of custom-col-ored cotton with allover poppy print from “one of Italy’s most renowned mills.”

Despite the inevitable comparisons be-tween the high-fl ying J. Crew and Banana Republic, Calhoun insisted Kneen was not hired to “fi x anything. We have a lot of momentum. Our business is strong. We just need to gain that consistency.”

Banana has been a bright spot for Gap Inc., which generally has struggled with declining traffic and negative comps. Banana Republic’s net sales in North America for the third quarter of 2007 were $607 million, up from $563 million in the third quarter of 2006.

For the last fi ve years, Kneen was cre-ative design director for Retail Brand Alliance, where he led the creative vi-sion for brands such as Brooks Bros. and Adrienne Vittadini.

“He has proven from his early days in Italy to his job at Brooks Bros. that he [knows] what this customer needs for various parts of his or her life,” said

Calhoun. “He’s been able to do that at the high end of fashion. Expanding our high-end lines is something we’ve talked about and something Simon has talked about. Are there more opportunities? Yes. We’ve seen it start to work. There are constant opportunities to look at those [lines].”

Calhoun pointed out that Kneen was the fi rst to design fashion collections for men’s and women’s wear at Brooks Bros., and was part of the leadership team that helped reposition the brand. Calhoun added Kneen’s leadership skills will allow him to unify the message behind Banana’s men’s, women’s and accesso-ries collections. “We have a very clear vision of what we want the brand to be and [Simon will] bring it through all our communication elements,” he said. “We tell our brand story with our product and that helps the teams working on market-ing and stores.”

Kneen’s appointment is effective Jan. 9. He succeeds Deborah Lloyd, who left Banana Republic in October to become

co-president and creative director of Kate Spade.

“When I talked to [Kneen] about what our vision for the brand is, he sees us continuing to move it forward,” Calhoun said. “As creative director, he’ll be in-volved in all aspects of the brand. He’ll be involved in store design. We are in the middle of looking at what the next store design will look like.”

During his tenure at Retail Brand Alliance, Kneen designed the collections under the Casual Corner label from 2003 until 2005, prior to the brand’s sale. From 2001 to 2003, he was creative director of Maska, the Italian fashion house known for its exclusive couture collection and ready-to-wear line. Prior to that, he was head designer, prêt-à-porter, for Maison Balmain, based in Paris. Kneen also led his own successful design fi rm and pro-duced the Simon Kneen Collection, a line of suiting, separates, knitwear and accessories, sold through luxury apparel retailers in Italy.

Kellwood to Repurchase $80 Million of Its Stock

“Expanding our high-end lines is something we’ve talked about and something Simon has talked about. Are there more opportunities? Yes. We’ve seen it start to work. There are constant opportunities to look at those [lines].” — Jack Calhoun, Banana Republic

Looks from the Monogram for women line launching this spring.

Simon Kneen

By Lisa Lockwood

NEW YORK — Confirming its be-lief in its future growth prospects, Kellwood Co. said Thursday it has entered into an $80 million acceler-ated share repurchase agreement with the Bank of America N.A.

Kellwood will repurchase $80 million of outstanding common stock, or about 18 percent of its out-standing shares based on Kellwood’s current stock price. Bank of America is expected to buy Kellwood’s com-mon stock in the open market, and the ASR program is expected to take up to nine months to complete.

Pressure has been mounting on the St. Louis apparel fi rm since private equity firm Sun Capital Securities Group — Kellwood’s second-largest shareholder with a 9.9 percent stake — issued and then reissued an unsolicited bid

for the apparel company last fall. Kellwood twice turned down the $21-a-share offer, saying it un-dervalued the company. Sun has made it clear it intends to buy the $1.6 billion company despite Kellwood’s two fl at-out rejections, and sources said a hostile takeover is a distinct possibility.

“The repurchase of shares is an attractive use of our capital, aligned with our goal of enhancing shareholder value and consistent with our long-term fi nancial plans and 2008 guidance,” said Robert C. Skinner Jr., chairman, presi-dent and chief executive offi cer of Kellwood, in a statement.

Kellwood said the transaction is consistent with its previously an-nounced long-term fi nancial plans and intended use of proceeds from the anticipated closing of the sale of Smart Shirts for $161 million.

WWD.COM11WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

Local Luxe Franchises Flourishing in TurkeyBy Suna Erdem

ISTANBUL — Luxury is booming here, and it’s making franchising a big business.

Sephora, Dolce & Gabbana, Chloé, Jimmy Choo, Coach and Prada are just a few of the names that, during the last 12 months, have opened their fi rst mono-brand stores with Turkish partners in the country’s biggest and richest city as the luxury market spreads to an increasingly affl uent middle class.

Shopping malls are lining up by the dozens to welcome international brands, which have rained on Turkey, especially Istanbul, in the past few years. One of the best examples of the growing market was the opening of luxury mall Istinye Park last fall. The mall, which contains brands such as Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Dior, Celine and Fendi, was fully rented a full year before it opened at a reported cost of $250 million.

And the fl ood shows no sign of abat-ing. In addition to monobrand stores by major labels, those said to be looking into Turkey are Saks Fifth Avenue, Selfridges, Italy’s La Rinascente and Spanish de-partment store El Corte Ingles, all hoping to capitalize on the lack of a department store tradition here.

All the demand creates a lucrative business for the small but growing num-ber of franchise partners that dominate the market. And as the brands move in, so the agreements evolve.

Take the arrival of Sephora, which en-tered the market as part of a pioneering partnership between its parent company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and Unitim, the company that brought Harvey Nichols to Istanbul in 2006.

The partnership for Sephora Unitim A.S. — owned 60 percent by LVMH, 40 percent by Unitim — is a new formula in a country where franchise and licensing have been the norm, and demonstrates the increasing confi dence internation-al companies have in the potential of Turkey’s retail sector.

“Turkey is in the process of joining the European Union, there is political stabil-ity here at last, the economic indicators are improving all the time and foreign investors are seeing that it has become a very attractive emerging market,” said Aret Cilingir, head of strategic planning and business development at Unitim, who said he believed the Sephora agree-ment to be the fi rst retail partnership of its kind in Turkey.

“In its first four months, Harvey Nichols was operating between 20 and 25 percent above its initial targets,” he said. “When international brands see how their label performs in Harvey Nichols, they see that the opportunity is there in Turkey and many have begun to talk to us about their own monobrand stores — some of them even as partner-ships like Sephora.”

Unitim’s labels now account for about 25 percent of the uberluxe shopping mall Kanyon. As well as Harvey Nichols, these include shirtmaker Thomas Pink, shoe label Bally, the popular Accessorise chain, chic London Chinese restaurant Hakkasan and separate shops for Agent Provocateur and Jo Malone within the Harvey Nichols concept. Not bad for a company that was not even in the retail sector 10 years ago. Speaking to a Turkish newspaper before the opening of Harvey Nichols, chief executive officer Burc Cemiloglu tentatively confessed it was his fi rst-ever interview.

Unitim founder Cemiloglu, 51, is the son of a local mayor from Turkey’s im-poverished southeast. He studied textile technology in the U.K., where he was sent to avoid political turmoil in Turkey that led to a military coup in 1980. On his return, instead of bringing the usual car or major appliances beloved of expats, he brought back 10 sewing machines and set up apparel producer Imteks, which

still makes products for Adidas, Nike and Puma.

In 1998, as Unitim, he got the franchise for Tommy Hilfi ger. “I could choose one of two paths — either I created my own brand or I could bring foreign brands to Turkey and enter the retail sector. I chose the lat-ter,” he said later.

Now, retail accounts for 70 percent of the company’s turnover, or $70 mil-lion in 2006 versus $30 million from the production side, and its share continues to grow.

Like Cemiloglu, the Eren family, whose packaging-to-cement company Eren Holding has the sought-after Burberry franchise and is slated to open Coach stores this year, also has a rags-to-riches story beginning in southeast Turkey. The four Eren brothers, including current ceo Ahmet, founded the underwear label Eros soon after leaving Bitlis, one of the poorest towns in Turkey, in 1965.

The family expanded into other areas — it is the third-largest packaging paper maker in Europe — but returned to its

fi rst love, fashion, signing a deal for the Lacoste franchise in 1991. Eren now rep-resents half a dozen foreign brands in-cluding Calvin Klein Jeans and Swatch. The group is aiming for sales of $300 million from its retail sector companies by 2010.

Beymen, the upmarket department store founded in 1971 and owned by businessman and onetime political aspirant Cem Boyner, held a virtual monopoly on foreign luxury brands throughout the Nineties. But, as compe-tition increases, it, too, is jumping into the fray, scooping up a large number of new franchises in one go. Last year alone, the company opened or planned stores for Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Fendi, Prada, Chloé, Etro, Moschino, Celine, Paul Smith, Jimmy Choo and Giuseppe Zanotti, said Beymen ceo Esel Cekin. It also has won the Tod’s franchise from another Turkish group.

“There is considerable interest in Turkey. The widening of Turkey’s hori-zons and the improvement in the econ-omy are very important factors in our growth,” said Boyner at an event to mark Beymen’s 35th birthday in late 2006. Plans to open brand stores for interna-tional labels had been in the pipeline for years, he added, but the time had not been right until now.

The attraction of the Turkish market also has been spotted from even farther east. While Western companies come to Turkey as a way to move into Eastern markets, Kuwait’s 115-year-old retail giant, the Al Shaya Group, sees it as a way into the West. Shaya, the group’s Turkish arm, came into being in 2002 by taking over the Topshop, Evans and Dorothy Perkins franchises.

It is also responsible for the pletho-ra of Starbucks and moved big into the enormous, midmarket Cevahir shopping mall in 2005, where the fi rm has opened a Turkish branch of the Debenhams department store. Shaya has a large number of British names under its belt, including the Body Shop, River Island, Next, Laura Ashley and Miss Selfridge chains, and was expected to have 500

stores in Turkey, including relatively uncharted provincial cities, by early this year.

The big industry names in Turkey also have seen the attraction in the re-tail market. Demsa was founded in late 1999 by Demet Sabanci, of the wealthy industrialist Sabanci family, and her hus-band, Cengiz Cetindogan, who worked in a Sabanci Holding company until shortly after the assassination of his boss, Ozdemir Sabanci, by a left-wing militant. In 2000, the family had the Mothercare franchise. Now it has eight brands, including Guess, Fornarina and Gerald Darel, and plans to open stores for D&G, Gianfranco Ferré and Ferré within a year.

More potential partners enter the field constantly, sometimes from the unlikeliest of business backgrounds. Emporio Armani and Gucci are here courtesy of Filiz Sahenk, heiress of Dogus Holding, better known for its media and banking businesses. Marks & Spencer is operated by fi nancial holding fi rm FIBA, owner of Finansbank.

The franchise or licensing model is the preferred way for most brands seek-ing a niche in Turkey, helping them ex-pand without any substantial investment and giving them access to crucial local know-how.

“In Turkey, you need to know the mar-ket very well, you need to know the loca-tions very well. Established relationships are very important here,” said Unitim’s Cilingir. “Sephora actually came in 1998 with their own investment…but they soon closed up and went home. They had the wrong management, the wrong location. Things were just not right.”

Ahmet Eren said he had to work hard to persuade Burberry to have another go after the British brand came to Turkey a few years ago with another fi rm, its lack of success giving it cold feet a second time around.

Sometimes the time is not right. In the late Nineties, when Turkey was plagued by ineffective coalition governments and still struggling for offi cial recognition as an EU candidate, the pomp of a glitter-ing Versace store proved too much for the

local market, even in upmarket Nisantasi. Marks & Spencer also faltered at around that time, closed down and changed fran-chise partners in 1999, but now has 26 out-lets in Turkey.

Today, the atmosphere is altogether different. As the Turkish market grows, so the international brands get to know the country. Cilingir predicted the part-nership model will develop further, while some brands are coming in directly al-ready. Spain’s Inditex has opened stores for several of its brands, including Zara, Oysho and Berschka, while Swedish rival H&M plans to follow suit.

But it is still a brave soul who comes here without local help. As one American businessman told WWD: “People think things are all screwed up here — they’re not, but things get done differently con-sidering that just over 10 years ago they had triple-fi gure infl ation and everything depended on the grace of your contacts. People sitting in London and New York can’t always appreciate this.”

Apart from franchising, designers are fi nding other creative ways to build a presence in the market.

Turkish luxury goods house Vakko made a stir in fall 2006 with the simulta-neous opening of a new store in Kanyon and a series of parties to launch a col-laboration with young New York designer Zac Posen, who adapted his collection for an exclusive Zac Posen@Vakko line.

Many international brands have yet to come to Turkey, but already the fran-chisees are looking farther afi eld. Turkey sits at the heart of an enormous potential market spanning Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia and the former Soviet republics and the Middle East. The re-gional contacts of Turkish companies and their closeness to European markets make them ideal partners for European and American names seeking to enter other nearby countries.

Unitim already has regional licences for Tommy Hilfi ger and Accessorise and is in talks with Harvey Nichols about branches in Bucharest, Romania, and Kiev, Ukraine. Eren Holding has plans to open regional Burberry stores. FIBA holding has opened two Marks & Spencer stores in Russia since 2005. Beymen, which carries 60 percent foreign labels, is looking into opening new stores in countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria to add to its Cairo base.

The growth in Turkey is part of in-ternational brands’ continuing push to developing markets farther and farther afi eld — from Dubai to Russia, India to China. As Boyner, announcing plans for Beymen’s domestic and international expansion, which is expected to cost $36 million over three years, said of the U.S. and Europe: “There is no point joining the crowds in squashed markets.”

The luxury business is booming in Istanbul.

Unitim-licensed stores make up 25 percent of the Kanyon mall.

Unitim-licensed stores make up 25 percent of the Kanyon mall.

By Stephanie D. Smith

In the early Eighties, People magazine founding editor Dick Stolley created “Stolley’s Law of Covers,” a mantra that some editors today can still recite from

memory: “Young is better than old. Pretty is better than ugly. Rich is better than poor. Movies are better than music. Music is better than television. Television is better than sports…and anything is better than politics.” Stolley, years later, updated that formula, adding the ultimate rule of thumb after making the di-sastrous decision to not put Elvis Presley on People’s cover the week he died: “Nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”

Stolley developed his format a quarter of a century ago when the magazine world was still relatively collegial and almost sleepy, and when newsstands held half the number of titles they carry today. Now the cover is even more important as American magazines rely more and more on their newsstand sales as the true mea-sure of a title’s success.

But appealing covers will differ depend-ing on the publication — what works for Vogue won’t necessarily fl y for Seventeen. And while almost all covers these days — even those of fashion magazines — focus on celebrities, a big star doesn’t always guarantee sell-through success. Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger don’t always sell well for fashion mag-azines, and younger stars such as Keira Knightley and Kirsten Dunst are usually successful covers only when they have projects to promote.

But stars who have the “X factor,” as Stolley, now a special adviser to Time Inc., told WWD in a recent interview, can work well on magazines despite not having a project to pitch. “There’s something about that person on the cover that you don’t know that you want to know,” he said — their relationships, their lives as parents, their side hustle as a professional lip gloss taster. That often gives subjects like Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Aniston or Victoria Beckham more newsstand power.

In the end, though, while “Stolley’s Laws” still hold some relevance for most magazines, the perfect cover formula re-ally doesn’t exist. Despite conducting focus groups, having cover line meetings lasting hours and wrangling celebrities in an attempt to create the most captivating cover, the magic of putting together covers has been best de-scribed by Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter: “There is no science to this.”

Still, what works and what doesn’t in to-day’s publishing world, where magazines not only have to compete against each other but also against TV, the Web and numerous other distractions? WWD surveyed a handful of maga-zine editors for some practical tips. Below, some of the more colorful wisdoms.

For women, it’s all about breasts…:Kate White, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, said that, despite the magazine’s focus on sex, Cosmo’s cover girls don’t have to have huge cleavages. But a winning cover does include some. “It’s not about big breasts like it used to be. It’s just about showing off your breasts, whether they’re double As or whatever.” As for the woman carrying the breasts, White says the perfect Cosmo cover model is “someone that you’d love to drive cross country with, you’re not going to end up ar-rested with and with whom you’re not going to get bored.”

…While for some men, it’s apparently not:For a men’s fi tness magazine, hard pecs and abs aren’t always necessary for eye-catching covers. “You can prob-ably count on [one] hand how many guys are shirtless” on Men’s Health cov-ers, said editor in chief David Zinczenko. Only one cover in 2007 had a cover model sans shirt (“Friday Night Lights” star Taylor Kitsch, January/February 2007 issue), compared with 2004, when half of the covers featured guys without their shirts on. Zinczenko said a guy will go shirtless on the cover “if the guy’s in the water, or there’s a good reason to do it, but as we become a more lifestyle-oriented mag-azine, it’s sometimes better to show that off with a guy who is wearing a shirt.”

Toilets are never compelling cover images:Real Simple uses room interiors on its covers, usually without people in them, but there’s one place in the home that doesn’t attract consumers. “Bathrooms don’t do well,” said managing editor Kristin van Ogtrop.

“The reader does not have a love affair with her bathroom. We mostly put it around the theme of cleaning, and it

still doesn’t work.” The best Real Simple cover photographs, said van Ogtrop, is one that puts the reader in the heart of a small part of a room that she could imagine in her own home. “If our reader sees an entire living room, with a very defi ned decorating style, certain furniture, she can’t put that into her life. The tighter shots of smaller scenes — a vase on a shelf, or a gift-wrapped box — are something that she can identify with.”

Always use a wind machine:“One of the things that’s crucial is hair,” said Allure’s Linda Wells (she means on the head, not the upper lip). “Not only abundant hair, but the blowing hair is good for us.” The length of hair isn’t as important, added Wells, as long as it’s moving. “The worst thing we can do is a really tight, pulled-back style or a hat.” Both would only appear on the cover, said Wells, “if I wanted to commit career suicide.”

Don’t forget the “sparkle”:But hats can work for Seventeen. On that title’s covers, every star wears an interesting piece of jewelry, a hat, a scarf or some other dramatic ac-cessory. “Every cover has to have the doodad,” said editor in chief Ann Shoket. “That is, a piece of jew-

elry, or [April 2007 cover girl] Avril Lavigne’s glove — something that catches your

eye in the visual, but also something in the cover line that catches your

eye.” Shoket also grabs the reader with the text

through visual accoutre-ments. “I’m taxing the de-

sign director to her limits on how many creative doodads

she can come up with — burst brackets, shadow stickers. If

you look at Marie Claire, which has beautiful covers, it’s one

font, it’s very clean and very neat. We are not clean.”

Don’t sweat the small stuff:Nine-point or eight-point type?

Serif or sans serif fonts? Often, the devil is in the details. Robert Safi an,

editor of Fast Company, believes it is more important to get the overall

image or story right than to sweat the small details. “The big discussions on

covers are Cher versus ‘Star Wars,’ ver-sus white or color backgrounds.”

When in doubt, reach in the cupboard:Celebrity magazines turn to packages on slow news weeks — Hollywood pregnancies, hottest couples or best celebrity wed-dings are common. “I call them ‘cans of navy bean soup.’ We need those cans of bean soup in the cup-board,” said People managing edi-tor Larry Hackett. Some “soup” fea-tures that the Time Inc. weekly has done this year include “The World’s Richest Teens” and the popular “Half Their Size” franchise, which has sold so well that People publishes a dou-ble issue every January devoted to the topic. But Hackett recommended using packages sparingly. “Readers are smarter and savvier and more demand-ing than they were in the past. They want news, they want freshness. When they see those roundups, they say, ‘Hmm, they re-ally don’t have anything this week.’ You have to make them yummy enough that people want to buy them.”

Finally, a great cover is one that’s edible:“My sense of a good cover that will sell well is if I want to lick it,” said Cosmo’s White. “And the Beyoncé [December 2007] cover I licked sev-

eral times…before the sun came up.” Another sign that a cover is a winner? “If I dance with it, or if I feel the urge to make out with it, then I’m like, ‘Wow, it works!’”

12 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

Media/Advertising

The Science of Covers: Celebs, Cleavage and Sparkle

Recent covers of Seventeen, Allure, Real Simple, People Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health.

LAST LAUGH?: Details editor in chief Dan Peres has been beaten up in the blogosphere and in print for deciding to put Kevin Federline on the magazine’s cover for the second time in two years. But it appears Peres’ move was a shrewd one: he said the December issue featuring the baby daddy to Britney Spears is on track to sell more than 75,000 copies, nearly 15,000 above K-Fed’s March 2005 issue. That’s a respectable sale for a guy who has been panned as one of the bigger losers of pop culture, but whom Details called one of “America’s new parental role models” in its December Power List. Though Federline, a fl edgling rapper and party promoter, is best known for marrying (and divorcing) one of the biggest former pop stars in the country, his image as a doting father has grown as his ex-wife becomes increasingly strange with every incident of head shaving, clothing removal and erratic driving reported in the press. “K-Fed is certainly relevant and that’s indisputable,” said Peres.

Federline’s popularity, Peres added, also speaks to the bigger theme of how even the most grotesque celebrities have become a larger part of mainstream news. “That sort of tabloid nature of the news is permeating so many aspects of our culture, from watching Paris Hilton being released from prison as if it were hostages being released with Jesse Jackson brokering the deal, or how the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more coverage than the death of [former president] Gerald Ford.”

But Federline’s appeal to the consumer isn’t as strong as other Details cover models — the August issue featuring Daniel Radcliffe will likely be its best seller of the year. The issue, the fi rst Details cover by photographer Steven Klein, banked 91,000 copies, compared with 73,000 copies for the August 2006 issue. And sticking with a winning idea, the January/February issue will boast another grown up young star: “High School Musical” actor Zac Efron. — Stephanie D. Smith

LIKE, THE CONSTITUTION IS SOOO HOT: Paris Hilton, First Amendment issue? Well, it’s about to be argued in court. Hilton sued Hallmark Cards Inc. in U.S. district court in California in September for using her likeness without permission after it produced cards titled “Paris’ First Day as a Waitress,” and used a photograph of her face superimposed on a waitress’ body. The cards also include Hilton’s catchphrase, “That’s hot!”, which Hilton had trademarked for use on apparel. The cards were part of a new line released in the

summer that included a number of celebrities and politicians such as Donald Trump, Rachael Ray, Tom Cruise, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others. Hilton believed that Hallmark misappropriated her image and invaded her privacy with the card, and sought damages said to be in the six fi gures, based on profi ts Hallmark earned on the cards at $2.49 a pop.

Hallmark responded by fi ling a motion in November to dismiss Hilton’s complaint, arguing the cards are a parody of Hilton’s likeness and protected under the First Amendment. But the court on Dec. 17 denied Hallmark’s motion, which means Hilton’s case will be heard in front of a jury at a trial set for Aug. 28. “Just because she’s a celebrity and she’s famous, doesn’t mean you can steal from her. That’s essentially what Hallmark’s done. They’ve stolen her notoriety to make money,” said Brett Blakely, Hilton’s lawyer.

Hallmark’s next step will be to fi le a response to the court’s decision by Jan. 14. “We are going to continue down the legal process,” said a Hallmark spokeswoman. “Our position remains the same. We feel it was within our

First Amendment rights to produce and sell the card. We don’t feel we have infringed on her rights in any way.”

The card company is said to have received complaints from some of the other celebrities featured in the line, which a spokeswoman for the card company said she was unaware of. But Hallmark is still producing the cards that include Hilton’s likeness, and has not pulled any of them from its stores or from the mass market retail chains that carry its cards. No settlement discussions have been broached. — S.D.S.

ALL CHANGE: Jennifer Tung, senior beauty editor at In Style, is leaving the Time Inc. title and heading to Cookie magazine, where she’ll become the new beauty and health director. Tung said as a mother of two, she is looking forward to switching to a parenting title. The Condé Nast Publications title will grow its beauty coverage this year and is also increasing its rate base, beginning with the February issue, to 500,000 from 400,000. Tung is on maternity leave and hasn’t set a start date at Cookie yet.

On the subject of parenting, Tung’s colleague at In Style, deputy managing editor Eilidh MacAskill, is also on maternity leave. MacAskill joined the title in November, in the number two spot behind managing editor Charla Lawhon. Yet shortly after MacAskill was hired, her sooner-than-expected maternity leave left many in a state of confusion, said sources close to the magazine. Her arrival had led many to believe that more changes were afoot. Meanwhile, Ariel Foxman is still working on the title as a Time Inc. editor at large. In Style did not comment by press time. — Amy Wicks and S.D.S.

INSIDE MAN: Sometimes it pays to know someone at a printing plant — and sometimes it doesn’t. On Thursday, Eugene Plotkin, the former associate in the fi xed income research division of Goldman Sachs & Co. who led a multifaceted series of schemes that included having employees of a Wisconsin printing plant steal advance copies of BusinessWeek for a preview of its “Inside Wall Street” column, was sentenced to 57 months in prison. His extensive insider trading network resulted in more than $6.7 million in illicit gains, according to a statement from Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Stanislav Shpigelman, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, also provided information to Plotkin on the company’s corporate deals, including Reebok’s

acquisition of Adidas (which was fi nalized in January 2006). Reebok’s common stock price increased by 30 percent from its closing price from the previous day. Shpigelman was sentenced to 37 months in prison. — A.W.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING: One day before Jeff Bewkes took over as president and chief executive offi cer at Time Warner Inc., he sold approximately $4 million in stock. And while these types of transactions aren’t exactly uncommon, the timing still raised a few eyebrows. Was it a signal of Bewkes’ outlook for the company? Nothing as interesting, unfortunately. It was a simple matter of tax liability: Bewkes had 500,000 shares that were currently vested, so he sold 238,855, at $16.58 a share, to cover the bill. — A.W.DIOR’S NEW LOOK: Taking Dior Homme back to its couture roots, Kris Van Assche made tailored elegance the theme for his fi rst advertising campaign — albeit with a hint of danger. “They look like young professional killers,” joked Karl Lagerfeld, who shot three models in a Parisian apartment wearing Van Assche’s ballooning, high-waist pants and pristine white shirts.

Van Assche described the images, which break in February magazines, as the “next step” for the brand — rather than a radical change — in its post-Hedi Slimane era. A budding photographer, Slimane lensed recent Dior Homme campaigns and favored an edgy, artsy approach.

“When one evokes ‘elegance,’ people tend to think you refer to something old-fashioned, boring,” Van Assche said. “I am totally aware that we are living in a sportswear generation, but I feel it is my duty — at Dior Homme even more so than at my own label — to propose an alternative.…I prefer to look at it as a challenge: make elegance radical.”

That’s the reason he selected Lagerfeld, who shoots campaigns for Chanel, Fendi, Dom Perignon and others. “Karl Lagerfeld represents in a very personal way this idea of ‘modern elegance,’” Van Assche explained.

One subtle change is that the ads were shot in color, “though one could mistake it for black-and-white,” Van Assche allowed. The models, all South American and in their mid-20s, are also slightly older than many recent Dior Homme spots.

Van Assche said his favorite image depicts a model at a window in a black suit with a satin collar detail on the lapels. “It best translates the message of modern noblesse,” he said.

Dior declined to reveal budgets for the spring/summer campaign, but Van Assche said the media spend would be on par with a year ago. — Miles Socha

ELLEN ON EQUINOX: In shooting her fi rst fi tness ad campaign, fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth is helping Equinox Fitness Clubs dress up its image. The fi ne chiseled physiques for which the 41-unit chain is known are still front-and-center, but the former-model-turned-lenswoman has given them a fashion edge. One overly baroque ad features a muscular man striking a table pose in the middle of a Victorian party surrounded by corseted beauties sampling the fruit platter resting on his stomach. Even more risqué is the image of nuns sketching a strategically shadowed naked man. Created by the ad agency Fallon, each of the four ads carry the tag line “Happily Ever” — as in the fairy-tale send-off — the idea being readers will question what they are striving for in fi tness and in life.

Ads will run in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Esquire and other magazines, and outdoor images are going up in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami. A behind-the-scenes videocast shot by von Unwerth will air in movie theaters in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Equinox executives declined to comment on the company’s media buy. — Rosemary Feitelberg

WWD.COM13WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

MEMO PAD

Images from the spring Dior Homme campaign,

photographed by Karl Lagerfeld.

A Hallmark card featuring a cartoon resembling Paris Hilton.

Ellen von Unwerth photographed the latest Equinox ad campaign.

WWD.COM14 WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

Until fairly recently, “diversity” on the air often amounted to an overweight wisecracking black

guy or an Asian forensics investigator. Then came “The Sopranos,” “Lost” and “The Wire,” which features — perhaps most memorably — a shotgun-toting gay homeboy named Omar Little, who robs drug dealers for a living.

In a television ad for the fi nal season of “The Wire” — which begins Sunday on HBO — Tony Kushner calls Omar the greatest gay character ever written for American television. Which is high praise, but a little misleading, since Omar is less a gay character than a very tough guy who happens to roll with the boys.

Michael Kenneth Williams, the actor who plays Omar, is not gay or a gangster, but he never had any doubt as to who he was playing on the show. “When I read his character, I quickly understood that he walked by a code,” Williams, 41, says in a telephone interview on Thursday. “He had morals, a method he didn’t go against.”

The actor also knew a thing or two about living on the street. He grew up in the Van Der Veer Projects in Brooklyn, N.Y., the 10th child of a father who wasn’t around. “He had kids with four different women,” he says. “They all knew each other and had a camaraderie.” His mother, who raised him, struggled to make ends meet as a seamstress.

“She had me at Kings County Hospital and then took the bus home,” he says.

By ninth grade, he’d lost interest in school, so he dropped out. For the next decade, he worked odd jobs and fl oundered around. “I was more interested in going to nightclubs,” Williams recalls.

On his 25th birthday, he was involved in a barroom brawl that left him with a giant scar on his face. “The guy was hiding a razor in his mouth,” Williams says, nonchalantly describing a tried-and-true street/prison technique in which tough guys (or gals) wrap sharp

objects in cardboard or plastic, before inserting them into one of three orifi ces to avoid detection from the police or nightclub security guards. (They’re stashed inside for safekeeping and removed as necessary.)

“He was a street dude,” Williams continues. “He had that edge up on me because I never walked with weapons. It just wasn’t where I was at. But I’d been drinking, my perception was a little altered and he got me. It was a wake-up call. At the end of the day, I’m glad to be alive.”

With a new sense of purpose, Williams plunged into a dancing and acting career.

As it turned out, his recently acquired souvenir had some uses. “I became the boy with the scar.

People knew how to identify me.” First came parts in music videos, among

them Madonna’s “Secret” and George Michael’s “Killer/Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” then a couple of episodes of “Law & Order.” Martin Scorsese tapped him for a bit part in “Bringing Out the Dead.”

Still, Williams wasn’t exactly raking in cash. At the time he got “The Wire” in 2001,

the struggling actor was paying the bills by working for his mother at a day care center she’d

opened. “I was still living in the projects,” he says. “I had no money. 9/11 had just come and gone. I really didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Omar felt like a ticket out and a role he was born to play, in spite of some obvious differences between the two. “I identifi ed both with his being in pain and his ability to be so focused,” Williams says. “It was a chance for me to shine.”

Which he did. Critics at USA Today and Entertainment Weekly all but proclaimed him the best thing on the show. In 2006, he received an Emmy nomination.

Of course, it would’ve been even sweeter if the critically acclaimed show’s ratings had come out of the basement, but Williams’ career is on the ascent,

nevertheless. He just fi nished work on Spike Lee’s next fi lm, which he shot in Tuscany. And he has a part in “The Incredible Hulk” and an indie fl ick with Matthew Broderick called “A Wonderful World.”

Understandably, he’s having a tough time saying goodbye to Omar (“The Wire” wrapped its fi nal season before the writer’s strike). “I don’t think I’ll ever have something to make me feel like that again,” he says. “It was just an amazing experience.”

And his new colleagues aren’t helping. “Every time I’d walk on Spike’s set he’d just yell, ‘Omar’s comin’, Omar’s comin’!’ That’s just who I was.”

— Jacob Bernstein

FAREWELL, JANET BROWN: The new year is going to have to get along without Janet Brown. The Port Washington, N.Y., designer boutique, which was in business for 24 years, offi cially closed its doors a few days before Christmas. According to one source at the scene on Dec. 21, the store’s last day, remaining merchandise was drastically reduced, and throngs of bargain hunters were hauling off clothing in their SUVs. Since Brown’s death of a heart attack in March, the 1,000-square-foot boutique had been overseen by her sister, Elaine Edelstein, an accountant from Philadelphia. Calls to the store went unanswered Thursday.

BIDDING AT THE CHANCE: Catching a Bryant Park fashion show might be ho-hum to some, but apparently a few Aspenites were willing to pay a pretty penny for the chance to get front-row seats. At last week’s Freestyle 2007, an annual après-ski benefi t for the Aspen Art Museum, the auction paddles were waving for a private jet journey and two tickets to Derek Lam’s show next month in Bryant Park. The winner wound up plunking down $31,000 before guests including Eleanore and Domenico De Sole, Michele Herbert, Ivana Trump and Denise Rich. The bidding was said to be even livelier for a Dennis Basso full-length Russian broadtail coat with Russian sable trim, which went for $110,000. Perhaps the fi nal bidders did so in the name of charity — Dennis Basso, who served as the title sponsor, watched the play-

by-play. The event’s fi nal tally topped out at $700,000 — a $57,000 increase compared with last year.

THE ARTIST KNOWN AS PRINCE: Richard Prince fans might be sad over the upcoming closing of his “Spiritual America” exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but fashion fans have a reason to be eager for it to end. On Tuesday, Louis Vuitton will host a party to fete the fi nal day of the museum exhibit. Models outfi tted in Vuitton nurses’ outfi ts will roam the event carrying what will arguably be the most coveted handbag since consumers ever uttered the name Murakami — Prince’s bags for Vuitton. The limited edition bags, on which Prince collaborated with Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs, will offi cially go on sale Feb. 1. But all those

invited to the Vuitton party will get a leg up on their competition: They’ll be able to preorder the bags there.

Fashion Scoops

PHOT

O BY

STE

PHAN

E FE

UGER

E

Richard Prince’s touch on the Louis Vuitton runway.

Madame Alix Grès will be getting her due at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of

Technology in New York, where an exhibition in her honor is set to bow next month.

More than 14 years after her death in pov-erty in 1993, which was not made public until the following year, the notoriously private de-signer will be celebrated starting with a Jan. 31 opening reception. The museum will showcase 70 of her designs in “Madame Grès: Sphinx of Fashion,” the name a nod to the Parisian cou-turier’s nickname.

This will be the second major New York show devoted to the designer since her death. In 1994, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a major retrospective of her work.

Her career began in the early Thirties making toiles for French fashion houses and stretched to 1988, when she retired. Throughout that time, she shunned the glare of publicity, preferring to work alone to craft the original designs of her creations. Spending 300 hours on one garment was said to be a routine thing for the designer.

“My only desire is to create dresses that im-press the world,” Grès once said.

While fashion followers tend to pigeon-hole her for exquisitely draped Grecian-in-spired gowns, the exhibition will delve into her many talents — namely her knack for classically inspired pleated matte silk jersey gowns; the use of simple, geometric designs based on ethnic costumes, and the three-di-mensional sculptural quality that accented most of her work.

There also will be pieces that once be-longed to the designer’s famous clientele, such as a gray-and-yellow plaid cape coat worn by Doris Duke in the Fifties and a one-piece silk crepe pajama owned by Diana Vreeland. The museum’s deputy director, Patricia Mears, organized the show. Museum visitors looking for more insight can peruse the 100 photographs that will be featured in the forthcoming Yale University Press book, “Madame Grès: Sphinx of Fashion.”

— Rosemary Feitelberg

Madame Alix Grès Exhibit Celebrates Fashion’s ‘Sphinx’

A cape once owned by Doris Duke.

A Grès-designed

gown.

The Secret Weapon

Michael Kenneth Williams

WWD.COM15WWD, FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2008

By Joyce Barrett

BANGKOK — Thailand’s largest retail property manag-er believes that business will improve in 2008 because of rising consumer confidence after the election last month that seeks to restore democracy for the first time since the September 2006 military-led coup.

“We’re quite confi dent of the new year,” said Sakorn Thavisin, senior manager for corporate communica-tion at Central Pattana Public Co., also known as CPN, Thailand’s top retail property developer. “We believe the new government will boost the confi dence of the consumer and investment and spending.”

Although retail spending slowed in 2007 as the econ-omy weakened under the military government’s leader-ship, CPN is pursuing plans to build four retail centers totaling more than 8.6 million square feet on the out-skirts of Bangkok at a cost of about $118 million. Retail spending increased between 4 and 5 percent last year, almost on par with growth in 2006, but down from 2003 through 2005.

The company, which manages 23 percent of the retail space in Bangkok, or about 7.4 million square feet, said it expects its 2007 revenue to increase 20 percent, primar-ily because of the 2006 opening of CentralWorld, a shop-ping center in the heart of Bangkok’s retail district.

The 6 million-square-foot center is fully rented and is drawing 150,000 visitors daily, meeting expectations, Thavisin said. Holiday traffi c last year was 50 percent more than in 2006, he said, and average spending by visitors was about $175. To boost visits, CPN spent more than $1 million in advertising and marketing campaigns in the fourth quarter.

The promotions, which began Nov. 13, included Elle Fashion Week Autumn/Winter, a midnight sale and a Disney promotion. Christmas decorations on CentralWorld’s plaza included a seven-story Christmas tree billed as the tallest in Bangkok. The display clogged foot traffi c on the nearby skywalk as Thais and tourists stopped to take photographs.

“Maybe our increased traffi c is because of the elec-tion, or maybe it’s because of the holiday, but we have a government after a real election and things should get

better,” Thavisin said. “We believe the new government knows the rules and next year will be a good year.”

The People’s Power Party, which is closely aligned with ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, won 233 seats in Thailand’s 450-seat parliament. Its leader, Samak Sundarevej, is negotiating with other parties to form a coalition government. Talks were suspended on Wednesday because of the death of Princess Galyani, the sister of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and the begin-ning of a nationwide 15-day mourning period.

Sundarevej is expected to be prime minister if his party forms a majority coalition. He has said he will pardon Shinawatra of corruption charges made against him by the military government. Shinawatra, who is in self-imposed exile in Hong Kong and London, said he plans to return to Thailand in the spring and recently invited the generals to play a round of golf in a gesture of reconciliation.

However, Somphol Manarangsan, a political econo-mist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said the economy won’t improve unless the new government fo-cuses on the economy rather than politics.

“Thai voters are most worried about the economy,” Manarangsan said. “Yet most of the political parties are focused on politics.”

Kobchai Chirathivat, CPN’s president and chief ex-ecutive offi cer, said in a statement that the company was looking to expand to India and Vietnam.

“CPN remains confi dent in Thailand’s economy and infrastructure,” he said. “We believe the economy will begin to pick up [this] year.”

Consumption increased about 1 percent in 2007, he said, compared with growth of 4 to 5 percent the previ-ous year. He predicted consumption would grow more than 1 percent in 2008.

Suttatip Peerasub, a retail analyst with Kim Eng Securities in Bangkok, acknowledged that Thailand’s economy suffered in 2007 under the military leadership.

“With the election, consumer confi dence will gradu-ally come back,” she said. “Sentiment has been quite poor and retailing slowed in 2007.”

The Bangkok-based Kasikorn Research Center re-leased a report on Tuesday urging the new government

to stimulate the economy by boosting consumer spend-ing and private investment since exports could slow be-cause of sluggish worldwide economies.

The Bank of Thailand tried to manage the lacklus-ter economy in 2007 with two interest rate cuts. Alistair MacDonald, head of research at Macquarie Securities in Bangkok, said there is evidence that the cuts boosted con-sumer spending. He declined to predict whether the still-forming government would positively infl uence the econ-omy, but said, “We’re hoping the easing monetary policy and a return to democracy will help the economy.”

Thailand Retail Anticipates Growth Under New Government

The holiday scene at CentralWorld in Bangkok.

ISSUE DATE: FEBRUARY 8 CLOSE: JANUARY 10

For more information on advertising in WWD, contact Christine Guilfoyle, publisher, at 212-630-4737, or your WWD representative.

FEBRUARY

THE WELLNESS ISSUE

BLOOMINGDALE’S PARTNERSHIP

ON SITE AT PERSONAL CARE

PRODUCTS COUNCIL

TRACKING BEAUTY AROUND THE GLOBE

PHO

TOS

BY:

KYL

E ER

ICKS

EN, D

ELPH

INE

ACH

ARD

, TH

OM

ASIA

NN

ACC

ON

E